Hush
by thesummerstorms
Summary: You can find beauty in the terrible. The disgraced can be the most lovely. They hush you as they sing in your veins. Female Revan. HIATUS.
1. Chapter 1

From the day I first met her, she had eyes like Corusca gems, and just as hard. Like Corusca gems in the Tatooine sun. I still never saw it coming.

She wore the desert in her smile, had smoke in her step. Maybe it was how she drew them in. They watched her, you know. They loved her. It was why they never had a chance.

Now she comes over me like a fever dream. Pressing a cool alabaster hand to my cheek, she soothes me like nightmare. In a mocking gesture of camaraderie, Revan brushes her lips against my cheek. I am blinded by dark shimmersilk hair and a vein-ridden face, a sickly yellow gaze so intense that I am burned.

Sweetly dripping from every curving of her mouth, Revan's words slice into me. I listen and listen, but I can't understand what she tells me. Please, the Force in its mercy, don't let me understand.

I beg for her to stop, and Revan pronounces her judgment. Smiling that deadly little half-curl of her lips, she explains to me why she can't, she won't.

Her scornful pride seeps into my bones. We have nothing to say to each other, but still she whispers like dust caught in the wind. She tells me things, Revan does, and holds my hand in hers. But what scares me the most is my own brain. Because I'm wondering if sacrilege is always this beautiful.

"There's so much more than you know. So much," she says silkily, "I'll have to show you."

I am terrified, Jedi be damned. I'm terrified, and Revan knows it. Can anyone even hear me calling? Revan can, of course. I can see her acolytes in the corner of my vision, still as caskets against the wall, but I can't make out their faces. They're not likely to do much anyway. They have yet to even speak.

Revan just laughs a little.

"Hush now. You'll get used to it eventually. You'll even come to like it. Stop your yelling. Just hush."

The thing is, my traitorous mind thinks Revan might just be right. My guardian heretic. My killing angel. You know, Revan is still wonderfully, terribly beautiful, in that unspoken way of hers. The woman is sadistic as she is confident, which is just one more part of her macabre charm.

If I'm honest, my own confidence has deserted me, and my sanity's not far behind. Somehow it has to stop. I'll give anything to make it end. Despite what I said earlier, I'm coming to believe the Force has no mercy.

She doesn't even try to stop me as a I jump to my feet, as I search desperately for something, anything to place between my hands to stop the pain of her presence. I spy it after seconds that feel like years, and in a last ditch attempt I dive for the blaster. It's siting so handily on the table. So easy.

I raise to fire, and Revan gives a small, pitiful sigh. Disappointment registers on her face. The dark robes draped around her gracile frame shift and rustle as she rises and blocks the blaster bolt effortlessly.

"I was hoping... But not today, I suppose. Not today. I won't wait forever, you know. It would be so much easier to stop struggling."

A single step forward, and she sings in my veins. Two and she's crossed the room.

Revan overcomes me, knocking the pistol from my hand with a clatter. Her hand is at my throat, her nails digging into my skin. The Force tangles the air in my lungs as I splutter and rasp. In simple, fluid motions she smashes me against the bulkhead. The impact sends pain tolling through my skull. With a flick of the wrist, she releases me. When I collapse, Revan lowers herself until she is by my ear.

"What is it like?"

She taunts me, stroking my face the way a mother would her child. Hatred singing whats left of my heart, I manage to glare at her. I try to tell her to go to hell, even though I'm already in it. A whimper trickles past my lips instead. Cocking her head to the side as if out of curiosity, she examines me with practiced eyes, the ones that turned thousands.

"Never mind. Hush."

Your reflection in a Corusca gem is supposed to be brilliant. I glimpse mine in her, twisted like a trick mirror. It's a lie of course, but not Revan's. My greatest lie has always been my existence. As I watch her prepare the blade, I am watching myself.

When the blade plunges it way into my chest, I wake screaming. The sheets are drenched, and reek of sweat. Thuds echo on the door, a muffled shouting comes from the other side. According the chrono, its daytime.

I wrap my hands around my raw throat, the way Revan did. The way I did.

Revan.

_Faith, Faith, Faith. _

I am Faith Mukan. I was never, never Revan. Right?

The air has gone still, heavy and unbroken by noise. I inhale slowly, then exhale, tasting it. Testing it. Whoever was on the other side must have abandoned the effort, gone away.

Surprisingly, my eyes are dry. I won't let that change. I refuse to cry. A mangled sob attempts to break the barrier of my throat, but dies there. I will not cry. Not for the people I killed. Not for Bastila. Not for Faith Mukan, the woman who never was. Not for myself.

No, never for myself.

I gave up that right a long time ago. Now I can't show my weakness. I can't crumple any farther. My singular saving grace has always been my strength, and I refuse to surrender it now. Everything else has been taken from me- my certainty, my purpose, my mind. If I loose anymore, I won't have anything left to use as glue. The galaxy is on my shoulders; I can't afford to fail again.

The Jedi think they saved me. They honestly believe it. They don't see her like I do. They don't see me. They don't see that she's still there, and the only difference is that now I can't remember enough to claim the blood on my hands.

Another moan rumbles still-born inside me.

"Hush," I tell myself.

**A/N:**

My first time writing an entire fanfic in first person, but I couldn't think of any other way to do it. Faith Mukan being Revan's alias.

**Edt: **Changed "Julise" to "Faith", do to conflict.

**Belated Disclaimer: **I don't own it. Sue me and I might be able to come up with two quarters from the underneath the couch cushions.


	2. Chapter 2

The pounding at the door resumes, and I resist the urge to flinch. Rising, I combat the echoes still flooding my brain. Try to put off that inborn instinct of humanity to run from our ghosts, to find something safely physical and quantifiable to assault. I do believe I will fail.

Who is at the door?

I half expect it to be Revan, wearing her intoxicating passion like a halo, and as a sword.

I half expect it to be me, the sword in my hand.

Quivering muscles preparing for flight, I take a tentative step forward, wondering and yet fearing to know. Revan with her sweet vengeance, my specter, my self? Faith, or rather Faith's ghost? Mission with fear in her eyes, Carth with hatred in his, the ghosts, the ghosts the ghosts…?

A pause, and then I hear a hesitant calling out springing unbidden from my lips:

"Hello?"

_Hush, hush, hush _the shadows chant back in reply.

I ignore them. Or at least I try.

"Revan? _Rev'ika_?"

It is Canderous's voice, gruff and sharp, yet plainly worried. _Rev'ika _he calls me. Little Revan. An affectionate term, for the Mandalorians at least. I both admire and scorn his temerity. But then he was, from the beginning, the one who cared the least and the most about this stained, shared soul of mine. He has valued me enough to try and save me for his people's _manda_, to take me into his clan, adopt me as a sister, so that my soul will not fade after death. He does not seem to notice, or care, about its tattered and divided state.

Light or dark, it has no meaning to him. He will follow Revan as he followed Faith, and if the time ever comes that there is a "Darth" added to that title, he will follow then, too. He is the singular one I can count on not to leave me. That makes him a comfort, but it does not make him safe. If anything, it makes him the most dangerous of all. Still, I unlock the door.

In his hand he holds a small, familiar bottle, the one he confiscated the night after the Leviathan, just in case, and a plastene mug. I step back to let him in, silent, weary, but he hesitates for just a moment. Canderous thinks I don't notice, but I do. I turn away, and he walks in.

"Revan? You all right?"

He obviously doesn't think I am. I'm not so sure, either. I may be lucid, or I might not. I'm past being able to tell. Night is uncertainty, it is fear, it is perpetual longing for the golden feather-kiss warmth of the sun, but uncertainty never leaves me, even by day.

All I can hear is Revan, telling me I shouldn't cry.

_Hush, hush, hush_

Canderous takes me by the shoulders, and with typical gruff gentleness sits me down on the bed. He does not wait for an answer; I don't expect him to. He knows as much of an answer as I could give him.

He takes my hand briefly, holding in a cup shape as if to keep blood from spilling over, and then places a doze-capsule in my palm, taken from the contraband bottle. Sweet salvation. Brief, but intoxicatingly dreamless sleep. Canderous is the only one who will give them to me, but I know Jolee and Juhani aren't being purposely cruel. They aren't me.

Canderous hasn't given me the mug, yet. He seems to be waiting for something. I tilt my head to the side and wait. What does he want from me?

"You can't keep this up..." he starts, and I begin to panic. Does this mean he is no longer willing to help me? To keep me safe from Revan, with her glittering yellowed eyes and her demon-saint's smile? If I don't sleep, I'm strengthless to fulfill my burden, to carry the weight I have been given, but if I close my eyes with out the sweet reprieve of the capsules, she finds me.

"Revan, this is a cycle now. You can't help anyone in the state your in, not even yourself. What have you been dreaming that so _shabla _awful you need medication?"

Because he sees, as I do, that salvation can be damnation, and your saving grace will be the weakness that kills you. You see, I'm growing more cynical, too, not just more confused. More frightened.

I don't want this.

_Hush, hush, hush_

But still, I must fight him. Only a little longer. Just a little longer. Defeat Malak, save Bastila, destroy the Star Forge and Revan, and then Faith will come back, and this will just have been a fever dream. Until then, I can afford to be weakened by these murmurings of my former self.

A small murmur is all that makes it past my lips, and as Revan did, he reaches, waits for an answer, and then recedes in disappointment. He does not punish me, but his hand is kept on his blaster as if he is expecting to see her, too. He will not help me fight her though. He will simply follow the victor.

He is the only one who will have me, but if I ask he will not keep me, nor keep me safe.

No one will help me.

No one can.

Please...?

But no one can.

I must face and claim Revan, before she claims me. But if I accept her, then what happens to Faith? Who do I become? If I accept her, how will it ever end? If she becomes anymore apart of me then she will kill me, and I will fail, fail, fail.

I cannot fail again.

A surge rips through me, a phantom memory of Revan's blade plunging into my flesh, tearing and cutting like Carth's eyes, and Mission's hesitance, and Bastila's pain-ridden absence. I whimper. I close my eyes.

Why is the Force doing this? Why does it ask this of me? I'm so tired, so weary. Must I have a destiny, a purpose? Must I be a deliverer when I can't even save myself?

Canderous hands me the mug. The pill slips between my lips and I sip jeru tea like tainted ambrosia to wash it down. He does not leave until I am fast asleep, deep in the one place Revan cannot have me.

**A/N: **One chapter to go, I think. Third person from Canderous 's point of view. Exploring the Jedi's mercy, simply because I'm fascinated by cynical Mandalorians. Thank you for your reviews so far, Nemo-of-Rayne, Captain Azzam Nvrmore, Hefster, and Magical Mistress Sarai.

By the way, can anyone suggest a good Beta for KotOR and Star Wars: Republic Commando?


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